Electric Vehicles Category Archive

Fossil vs Hybrid vs Electric

Leave a reply Christopher Roberts

Last time, we explored “self-charging hybrids“.

Today I present an overview of the four most common ways of powering a car in 2020 – little disclaimer there since this almost certianly won’t be the case in 2030!

1) ICE – Internal combustion engine car ⛽

This car is 100% powered by fossil fuels, i.e. fuels up with petrol or diesel to burn in the “combustion chamber” (engine).

An ICE powertrain
The drivetrain for a petrol powered car

ICE cars get a around 30-55mpg (miles per gallon) in combined (urban and rural) driving conditions.

2) Mild hybrid – what Toyota and Lexus like to call “self-charging” ⛽

These are also 100% powered by fossil fuels.

When braking, some energy is recovered from the spinning wheels which feeds a small battery – similar to how a 12-volt battery is charged. The car can then drive a limited distance on this charge. Any physicist will tell you “self-charging” isn’t possible, the energy comes from somewhere – in this case it’s from the petrol that was burnt.

Mild hybrid cars get a around 35-60mpg on average.

3) PHEV– Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle ⛽🔋

These cars can drive a short distance (10-25 miles) on electricity alone. They can be plugged in to charge like an electric car or filled up with petrol and driven like an ICE car.

They have regenerative breaking to recover energy back into the battery. So once they use up their charge, they are effectivly a mild hybrid.

The disadvantage of PHEVs is they are less efficient than EVs in electric mode and less efficient than an ICE cars in petrol mode, since they are carrying the weight of an engine and fuel tank, as well as a motor and a battery.

Plug-in hybrids get a around 50-75mpg on average.

4) EV or BEV – Battery electric vehicle 🔋

These cars are 100% powered by electricity. That energy could come from the UK grid (currently still 30% fossil fuel powered) or it could come from renewables – such as charging solar panels on your roof.

An EV powertrain
The drivetrain for an electric car

Many electric cars have one-pedal driving, recovering energy back into the battery, right until the car stops – the most efficient way of slowing down.

Electric vehicles can achive over 175mpge (miles per gallon electric)!

Here’s another article from the series explaining why electric cars are so efficient. 🙂

Electric Cars made from Vegetables and Waste Materials

3 Replies Jonny Hankins
foto: Bart van Overbeeke

This week I would like to follow in Christopher’s skorchmarks with an article about electric cars.

Students at Eindhoven University of Technology have unveiled a car built almost entirely from waste materials, including lots of plastic that was reclaimed from the sea. See it in the photo above.

They call the car LUCA, and she has some impressive stats:

TOP TRUMPS

Name: LUCA

Top Speed: 90 km/h

Action Radius: 220 km

Weight: 360 kg without batteries

Battery weight: 60 kg

Consumption conversion: 180 km per litre.

It’s a two seater sports car.

The chassis is made from a mixture of flax and plastic recouped from the sea with the core constructed from recycled PET, the body is made of recycled ABS, a hard plastic used in many consumer products such as toys, televisions and kitchen products, and covered in a wrap rather than being painted.

The seats are made from recycled materials, as are the side and rear windows and the console.

The idea behind the car’s production is to demonstrate possible other uses for waste, but the team that produced LUCA have long been busy producing other interesting cars.

The University runs TU Ecomotive, 22 students from 7 different courses, whose aim is to make mobility greener in every way possible. LUCA is car number 6!

Each car boasts its own incredible stats and features, based upon its production goal.

TOP TRUMPS

Name: ISA

Action Radius: 90 km

Battery weight: 12 kg

Consumption conversion: 400 km per litre

ISA is legal to drive ion the road and is therefore the most efficient car in Europe.

NOAH is a city car made predominantly from sugar and flax, is for the modern you, and is equipped with several smart features focused on the driver. Noah can be unlocked with any smart device with an NFC chip, immediately recognizes who you are and adjusts all the interior settings to your preference, loads your contact list and finds your destination from your phone to enable the GPS and get you to your appointment on time.

TOP TRUMPS

Name: NOAH

Top speed: 110 km/h

Action Radius: 240 km

Weight: 360 kg

Consumption Conversion: 300 km per litre

Smesh Gearing and lots of interactive technology

Name: NOVA is a modular car whose body shape can be changed to suit its purpose.

Name: LINA is biobased, with the chassis and bodywork built from vegetable flax. She has 100 km range and is also certified for European roads.

All of the cars are electric, and you can download press packs and further details from the website here.

Could this be the future of mobility? A circular industry?

How do self-charging cars work?

2 Replies Christopher Roberts

Toyota, Lexus and Kia use self-charging as a term to describe their hybrids.

Mild hybrid doesn’t sound as exciting or technologically advanced as a self-charging car, which is probably why they market them as that!

How Do Self-Charging Cars Work?

A self-charging hybrid has a small battery and an electric motor. When the vehicle brakes, the initial phase of braking is used to charge the battery. Brakes (disks and pads) then kick-in after.

This is a basic form of regenerative braking (or regen) something plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) and electric vehicles (BEVs) do too, but to a greater degree and effectiveness.

The small amount of energy recovered from braking is then able to be used to drive a limited distance. The battery can only run for around a mile before it needs recharging.

What Powers a Self-Charging Hybrid?

Exhaust pipe emissions on a self-charging car

Unfortunately, a self-powered car breaks the laws of physics, as the energy must come from somewhere. In one of Kia/Lexus/Toyota’s hybrids, the power comes from burning fossil fuels – the petrol in the internal combustion engine.

This means self-charging cars are 100% powered by petrol. All the propulsion achieved is down to petrol – since the cars don’t plug-in.

If we refer to hybrids as self-charging, we should really refer to all petrol and diesel cars as self-charging, since these cars don’t need plugging in to charge their 12-volt battery which powers the wipers, headlights and other electrical ancillery services.

How Far Can A Self-Charging Car Travel?

Toyota et al claim that their mild hybrids can be driven over 50% of the time on “pure electricity”. That makes them seem awfully green, given we tend to associate electricity with being green and petrol with being polluting. This claim is misleading for two reasons:

  1. All the electricity used to driver is generated by burning petrol, so it certainly isn’t the clean energy you can get from the grid or solar on the roof of your house.
  2. It’s crucial to remember that Totota reference time not distance – if you drive in stop-start traffic, the engine might be off for a large proportion of the time as you’re stationary. Some of the slower speed driving may be achievable using the battery, but because the battery is very small, it will drain extremly quickly and require recharging – so the petrol engine turns on. In terms of distance driven, around 1-3% of the distance driven uses the battery. This translats to around 2 miles in 100 miles of driving.

Do Self-Charging Cars Exist?

Will we ever see a car that can power itself? In the Toyota sense of self-charging, no. It’s not possible to drive a hybrid without putting petrol in it.

Lightyear One

However, there are projects like Lightyear One, working to create cars that you may never need to plug-in! These are pure electric cars (not hybrids, so no fossil fuels) and can be charged by plugging-in, or from the solar panels built into the roof, bonnet and boot! ☀️⚡🔋🚗

Lightyear are aiming to be able to charge an impressive 12 kilometres (7 miles) from 1 hour of sunshine charging – using the solar panels on the roof! For those who drive short distances, or travel infrequently, that could mean you’d never need to plug-in!

More info on the Lightyear One in this Fully Charged video.

Should Self-Charging Be Banned?

In Norway (home of the EV, where over half of cars sold in 2020 were fully electric) they’ve banned adverts that reference “self-charging” believing the term is misleading.

I believe marketing a petrol car (100% powered by fossil fuels) as self-charging should be banned. It makes polluting cars that burn fossil fuels seem cleaner and if you don’t do your research, you might think you’re doing your bit to look after the environment when actually, nothing could be further from the truth.